Saturday, July 03, 2010

It was a weird feeling being locked in a cage like animals. Told by my captors that it was wrong (but also laughed at by others), begging for food and water. Then, down the hall across from my cell I saw this: the bald Barrie officer was dragging in a kid with mild cerebral palsy (I saw him with a friend while they were arrested, he was so scared). He pushed and then they said something to him, his clothes were torn and his eyes red from crying. I guess they wanted his shoes, because he struggled to lift his leg (his pants were falling down) when the officer slammed his leg down. “Never mind. Stop being stupid.” He laughed at the kid, as did the other officer. Away they went. Heard a door slam.

...

The female officer who helped me aids in bringing some watery orange Tang to all the cells. We line up, quietly and broken, for our drink. I find out from Kate that this same female officer broke down and cried with the women at their cell. She was sobbing and apologizing, “This is wrong, you shouldn’t be here. This is all so wrong.”

It's a fascinating first hand account of uncoordinated mass arrest and the spectrum of reactions from both police and captives to the ordeal.

We are very lucky nobody died. Conditions were such in the overcrowded cages full of exhausted, extremely dehydrated and undernourished people, some injured, for any number of medical emergencies. Confused, sometimes sadistic, uncoordinated guards would not have helped. Had it gone on any longer, people would have.

Whatever strategic stunt they thought they were pulling against the public with this, there had better be hell to pay.